Check Out My New Book, The Dragon Kings Of Oklahoma!

I swear, this isn't all marketing, just let me explain.

So I'm back after a loooong absence with a new book you can pre-order! I'll show you the book right away to not waste your time. Then, if you wanna stick around after to hear why I dropped off the Internets and what my future publishing plans are, pull up a seat.

Anyway, here's the cover and description:

They were just two good ol’ boys putting out a fire in the Ouachita mountains. They didn’t expect to find a mother dragon sitting on her brood…

Daisy Collins was born in Oklahoma and he’s gonna die in Oklahoma. But a busted hip means that Daisy can’t hold a steady job and is in danger of losing his family home.

So when Daisy stumbles across a botched scheme to smuggle dragons out of Germany, and his best friend Wild-Eye says these dragon eggs could be the ticket to financial stability, Daisy agrees. How hard could it be to sell off baby dragons?

Very, as it turns out. Everyone wants the dragons - Dusty, the werewolf owner of the local All-Mart; Johanna, a dragon-hunter who’s tracked Germany’s lost national treasures to Oklahoma; and Sheriff Kenny, who’ll do anything to save his town’s tourist-friendly image.

But the biggest threats to his get-rich-quick plan are these adorable, deadly dragons, who Daisy slowly comes to think of as his beloved pets…

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Here is where you can buy Dragon Kings Of Oklahoma.

It's $2.99, only on Kindle, and my wife thinks it's a heckuva read.

And here's the deal: this is my first self-published book. They say that if I can get about 100 copies sold before it comes out on September 3rd, it has a good chance of making the top 10 for many Amazon bestseller lists, which in turn makes Amazon more likely to recommend it. So if you'd like to help a writer out:

1. Buy the book (it's $2.99, and I believe I am obliged to say that it “costs less than a cup of coffee”)

2. Mark it as “want to read” on GoodReads.

3. If you have friends who'd like to read a book that's "Tiger King, but with baby dragons," please, get the word out to 'em.

Anyway. Marketroid shill ends. Let’s answer some questions I assume you have?

Will there be other books in this series?

Yep! Dragon Kings of Oklahoma has two sequels coming out this year: The Fae Lords of Oklahoma is coming out in late October, and The Hippogriff Riders of Oklahoma is arriving in early December. I'll keep you updated whenever I get the art and the Amazon link.

Will you be self-publishing other books?

Yep! I have four finished novels that were just too much trouble to find a home for in traditional publishing. I am what they call a "quirky" writer, which is to say that every book I write is significantly different in some way from the others… So it's hard for traditional publishers to market me.

(For the record, Dragon Kings is closer to the "Flex" end of the spectrum than the "Sol Majestic" spectrum. If you liked Valentine, you're probably gonna like Daisy.)

The net result is that it's easier for me to self-publish, get the covers and titles I'd like, then flop 'em out for the free market to decide how good it is. So if I've blogged about some book concept you found interesting but you never saw that book come out... well, it'll be self-published somewhere down the line. That polyamorous Narnia book I gushed about? Coming. The BDSM rope-fighting fantasy book? Coming. The sweeping fantasy book I wrote for Gini one chapter at a time when my Mom had cancer and my sanity was slipping and I had to write about a kind and loving world to make my sweet wife happy?

Coming soon(ish) to an Amazon near you. (Soonish being, “In a year or two” - I can’t publish them all at once.)

Will you be touring?

Oh God no. The tours were diminishing returns for publicity and, alas, though I absolutely loved hanging out with y'all, pretty brutal on my mental health. So no more tours, no more conventions, no more guest blog posts, just a happy writer curled up in his happy home with his happy wife.

What about newsletters?

Tell you what: I don't want this to be a pure marketroid newsletter (BUY MY BOOK, FAITHFUL CONSUMERS!) - so if you've missed my essays, I'll write a few here on the regular. If you have suggestions about anything you’d like to see a Ferrettish take on, send them in. The next newsletter will be about researching rural Oklahoman life when I live in Cleveland. Probably.

Where did you come from, where did you go, where did you get to, Ferrett-Eyed Joe?

I wrote about my Internet exit in-depth here, in case you missed it. But the short version is that lots of people loathed me unceasingly for dumb things I'd said, and lots of people idolized me unceasingly for smart things I'd said, and I was starting to have mental breakdowns because the real me - the human me - got lost in the shuffle. So when my Mom got cancer (she’s doin’ fine, thanks), I stepped away from blogging and social media to concentrate on the things that mattered.

My life has been much better since then, thanks for asking.

So yeah, I’ve been spending copious amounts of time not stressing about today’s blog entry blowing up for one reason or another (even going viral for positive reasons can be pretty stressy), not being concerned about the judgment of strangers on the Internet, and not constantly hunting for Hot Takes so I could say something to remain interesting. That’s been nice.

But to be honest, there are still a lot of days I miss y’all. I remember an astonishing amount about each of you; I miss posting an entry and having discussions with you fascinating folk, getting legitimate pushback as you made me consider and reconsider my own biases, interacting with folks with cultures I’d never meet in my whitebread Cleveland suburb, and the memes, oh my God, the memes. There’s benefits to being a public figure…

But the drawbacks, in part, led to permanent self-harm.

So I’m gonna try to skate that knife’s edge between “I’m writing books” and “I’m not really a public figure any more.” Because I don’t really have the wisdom to say much beyond what goes into my fiction, which is thankfully marked as, y’know, fiction.

But! If you wanna email me to say hello, well, figure I’ll be swamped for a bit, but I’ll be happy to hear from you. Or if you want to join my Discord, where there is an abundance of lovely people, that’s another way to keep in touch.

Or just stay subscribed. Like I said. I don’t know much about writing… but I’ll tell you what I know.

Thanks for stayin’ with me.